Today a crunchy, zen upper middle class white man had our health food grocery store clerk in tears for yelling through the store and on all the check out surfaces she works that we were all sheep for wearing masks.

She wears a face shield, and lost colleagues to COVID.

He’s ready to coopt everything from the South East Asian workers, their recipes, their music, their spiritual practice, their names as his tattoos and even their lives. The ultimate consumer.

The managers wouldn’t step in for the workers, the result of a well known and long time contentious relationship. I asked him to leave, that the masks arent for him they are to protect workers. He scoffed calling me an imbecile and began to approach my face.

He has maybe 80 lbs on me, so as she packed my groceries I asked her to pack the hard things into one bag and sister immediately understood. (We aren’t allowed to pack right now). I wrapped that bag around my right hand as I tried to deescalate until he was inches from me.

Then he began to ask me questions to which I replied no, I believe in science. Please get out of my face.

I really wanted him to just leave, a dangerous situation just got more dangerous. And it was probably worse for the workers and elders now. I fantasized about knocking him over that big dumb face if he attacked me, but he didn’t. He left yelling.

Then the bad ass worker told me to pause before I left. Checking exterior cameras to see if he was was going to ambush me. He was gone. He is probably home right now wearing a Sanskrit shirt, mediating to gods who don’t hear him and ideals he wears as accessories, colonialist pig